NIGERIA EMERGES AFRICA’S LARGEST ECONOMY TODAY.

— April 6, 2014
Nigeria will today be declared Africa’s largest economy as a result of the rebasing of its economy.

Sources close to the Ministry of Finance and the National Bureau of Statistics said the minister of finance and coordinating minister for the economy, Dr Ngozi Okonji-Iweala, will today announce Nigeria’s new rebased gross domestic product (GDP) of about $432 billion compared to that of South Africa which stood at $370 billion at the end of 2013.

It was learnt that a list of activities captured under the new standards increased from 33 to 46 because of the addition of sectors such as Nollywood, telecommunications and information services, publishing, motion pictures, sound recording and music production as well as arts, entertainment and recreation, financial institutions, insurance and real sectors.

A nominal GDP is the sum value of all produced goods and services at current prices while real GDP is the sum of all produced goods and services at constant prices and is useful for showing how an economy changes in size and how average living standards change over time.

Rebasing the GDP of a country means that statistics give the most up-to-date picture of an economy possible. Nigeria’s old GDP base year is 1990.

NBS said recently that the new base year for arriving at the new rebased nominal GDP is 2010. It said it would be based on the latest system of national accounts 2008 from 1993 previously as well as the international standard of industrial classifications: 4.0 from the previous 3.1.